Arthur Hardy, the publisher of an annual Mardi Gras guide in New Orleans, began searching in the 1980s for a film of the parade that, according to old catalogs of silent films, had been produced in the 1800s.
He wrote to every expert he could think of. He tried the Library of Congress, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He failed and lost interest – then moved on to trying.
He kept getting the same answer, he remembered, “You’ll never find it.”
Mr. Hardy tried to contact Wayne Phillips, a curator at the Louisiana State Museum. Mr. Phillips tried Will French, a corporate lawyer who works in film financing and who serves as the in-house historian of the Rex Organization, one of the most prominent groups organizing Mardi Gras floats. In March, Mr French Mackenzie tried Roberts Beasley, a family friend of his and an archivist specializing in film and audio.
Mrs. Beasley researched online databases. Within five days, she found the film—a depiction of the Rex Organization’s fanciful floats from the distant world of 1898 New Orleans that had somehow ended up in the archives of the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam.
“It jumped over many, many years,” said Mr. Phillips, “from Arthur to me, to Will to Mackenzie, and finally to Amsterdam.”
The discovery, reported by The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, has stunned local historians and grandparents who help organize Mardi Gras.
“This is probably the most important find in Louisiana film history,” Ed Poole, the author of several reference books on the subject, said in a telephone interview.
The film — considered by experts to be not only the oldest surviving footage of New Orleans’ beloved Mardi Gras parade, but also the oldest known footage of anything in the city — was screened Wednesday night at the Louisiana State Museum. It will be featured in a special exhibit running through December to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Rex Organization.
The film was made by American Mutoscope, an early film production company. The only known copy of the film appears to be in the possession of the Eye Film Museum, and as of now, the museum will not allow it to be widely distributed, Mr Phillips said. Mr. French showed the film to a DailyExpertNews reporter via a Zoom call.
It only lasts about two minutes, but using a large-format 68 millimeter film, it depicts the scene in striking detail: the tufts of fake beard costumes, the battlements in the wings of winged horse sculptures, the ornate canopies and carved columns of small gazebo-like structures installed on top of floats.
“We’ve looked at a lot of old footage of the Rex parade since the 1940s and the 1950s, and even into the 1920s – and the quality is not like this,” said Mr. French.
The theme of the February 22, 1898 Mardi Gras was Harvest Queens, with each float symbolizing a different crop. The film shows a pineapple float whose riders are dressed in pineapple-shaped hats and vests with crossed shutters that evoke the texture of a pineapple skin.
“We now mass-produce costumes for hundreds of riders,” said Mr. French. “They can’t have as much detail as these costumes had in 1898. Each one is different and custom made.”
The film shows both well-known and obscure traditions. The backdrop features a Spanish-style wrought iron balcony that you can still find on many old New Orleans homes. A wagon shows Rex, the king of Mardi Gras who to this day is anointed every year by the Rex Organization. He swings from a throne five steps higher than the foot of the float, surrounded on all sides by decorative orbs with tassels.
Mr. French showed the film to Lynne Farwell White, 78, a granddaughter of Rex that year, Charles A. Farwell.
“I never knew him,” said Mrs. White. “I never came face to face with him. I never saw him as a person – and there he was as a living person in the movie. As a granddaughter, it was a special moment.”
The film also captures a tradition that would soon disappear from New Orleans Mardi Gras – the ‘boeuf gras’ or fattened ox, which parades through the city. Viewers can see a placid-looking ox positioned atop a float resembling the Mardi Gras king looking down on his subjects masterfully. In recent decades, the boeuf gras has only been recorded in papier-mâché form.
“That was really memorable – seeing for the first time the live boeuf gras, the symbol of carnival for everyone in the actual parade,” said Mr. French.
Other differences between the 1898 parade and those of recent years are the formality of the crowd (umbrellas and top hats galore); the nonchalance of the preparations (no police, no barricades); and the lack of beads or trinkets thrown at beer festers.
“Everyone out there is there to see the art and the spectacle,” said Mr. French.
Some seemingly mysterious elements of the parade have been elucidated with research — silver bell signs signal the 25th anniversary of the Rex Organization, Mr French said — but other aspects of the procession, such as whether the floats are waving wands or sceptres, await further investigation.
Rediscovered early films that document everyday life become their own genre. “Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” a documentary analyzing the film made of Polish Jews in 1938, just before the Holocaust, restores the “humanity and individuality” of its subjects, DailyExpertNews reported in January. Other recent examples include films of New York City from 1911 and Ireland in 1925 and 1926.
This latest glimpse of the past also teaches us about our own times—particularly the success of New Orleanians in preserving their heritage.
“It’s certainly grown and changed a bit, but at its core Mardi Gras is the same,” said Mr. hardy. “We parade; we celebrate. This is who we are.”
